1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and, in particular, to a method and system for requesting, responding, and caching to a request message. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method and system for implementing a content rating-sensitive response for filtering items entered in a cache.
2. Description of Related Art
The World Wide Web (WWW, also known simply as xe2x80x9cthe Webxe2x80x9d) is an abstract cyberspace of information that is physically transmitted across the hardware of the Internet. In the Web environment, servers and clients communicate using Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) to transfer various types of data files. Much of this information is in the form of web pages identified by unique Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) that are hosted by servers on web sites. The web pages are often formatted using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which is a file format that is understood by software applications called web browsers. A browser requests the transmission of a web page from a particular URL, receives the web page in return, parses the HTML of the web page to understand its content and presentation options, and displays the content on a computer display device. By using a web browser, a user may navigate through the Web using URLs to view web pages.
The creation and publication of web pages is an unrestricted and uncoordinated process. The latest news, book reviews, amateur poetry, games, research, stock and bond price quotes, chat rooms, groups, clubs, shareware, technical support, on-line shopping, etc., may be found on the Web. However, some of the published text, graphics, images, and video clips may contain content that some people regard as unpleasant or objectionable.
While browsing the Web, a user may follow a hyperlink from one web page to another web page. The user may not know what type of content will be viewed at the target or destination of the hyperlink, as hyperlinks are usually very short text strings that provide only a term or a few words that may interest the user given the context of the surrounding material. The content of the presented hyperlink is often a text string that merely provides the URL of the destination Web page, and the URL is arbitrarily defined by the Webmaster of a web site or by the author. Hence, there is no guarantee that the hyperlink seen by the user provides an indication of its content. A user may follow a hyperlink without knowing that the destination web page will contain material that the user regards as objectionable.
As the Web continues to increase dramatically in size, corporations and organizations have attempted to promote themselves as web portals or, following the analogy of the Internet and the Web as being an information superhighway, as on-ramps to the Web. By indexing and collecting vast amounts of information resources within one web site, a web portal attempts to become a user""s favorite Web starting point for each navigation session of the Web. A user, knowing that he may be able to find almost all desired information within a single web site, may prefer to search and browse through the web portal. A web portal gains a commercial advantage through increased viewership by receiving more advertisement revenue per web page viewed. However, in an attempt to attract as many users as possible, web portals increasingly gather information content together on a single web site, knowing that some of the information will offend the users of various interest groups.
The same situation applies to web search engines. As the World Wide Web has increased in size, search engines have been created to provide help for navigating through the information in cyberspace. These search engines index and store large amounts of information from the Web, without regard to content, in order to provide web searches that are as complete and as thorough as possible. When a user submits a search request to the web search engine, the user may receive some offensive content intermixed with useful information that the user is attempting to find.
In an effort to provide a user with the ability to screen out objectionable content, web browsers have been updated to enable the user to set rating level preferences within the user""s web browser. Other filtering applications have been created that allow user rating level preferences, such as SurfWatch(trademark) from SurfWatch Software, and CyberSitter(trademark) from Solid Oak Software, that work in coordination with the browser. By setting rating preferences for a variety of content categories, a user may filter out various contents before the user views the content on the user""s display. For each web page that a web browser receives, the web browser or filtering application checks the web page for objectionable content according to the rating preference parameters set by the user.
As a user browses the Web, hyperlinks may be followed without worry of viewing offensive material. Search requests may be submitted to search engines without receiving both desired and undesired content. However, the offensive material is still transmitted by the web servers and received by the web browser.
Similar problems are encountered when the user accesses sensitive sites on the Internet, such as e-commerce, banking, stock and commodities trading, and professional services. Once downloaded, the information contained in those sites is immediately cached to a memory and/or disk cache. The information is then available to anyone having access to the user""s computer memory, whether the computer is accessed locally or remotely.
Currently, the user has very little control of the browser cache other that to allocate cache size, both memory cache and disk cache, and to perform a clearing operation on the data contents already stored in the browser cache. Conventional browser technology does not give the user the option of restricting assess or blocking the incoming web page from the browser cache while still presenting the requested web page for viewing. At best the user is given the option of blocking web pages which exceed a predefined size, in a round about manner by setting the browser cache size preference lower that the size of a requested web page.
It would be advantageous to provide a browser with the capability of blocking web page information from the browser cache. It would further be advantageous to allow the user to predefine preferences for selecting which web pages to be blocked from cache. It would be even more advantageous to provide browsers a means for viewing information which is never written to cache. It would also be advantageous to provide the user with a means to block information from cache based in the identity of the information; the content of the information by scanning the document for key terms; and finally by information ratings associated with the information, such as the present content rating system currently carried by some URL""s assessed on the Internet.
The present invention provides a method and system for filtering the content of a web page to be cached, solely as a function of the web browser. In the present invention, a user sets preference parameters that filter web page contents from being stored in the cache. Cache filters take a variety of forms, such as ratings filters, web page identifier filters, and key word filters, which scan accessed contents of a web page for user selected terms. The filtered web page is then blocked from the browser""s cache. Conversely, a user sets preference parameters that filter web page contents to override the block from cache preferences and store the filtered web pages that were previously designated as web pages not to be cached.